


anything less than nothing

by poppyseedheart



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Dubious Presence of the Supernatural, M/M, Pre-Slash, Theoretical Episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 02:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppyseedheart/pseuds/poppyseedheart
Summary: “Wow,” says Ryan.Shane doesn’t know what to say. In the end, he sighs, feeling strangely helpless as he replies, “Sometimes a shadow’s just a shadow, Ryan.”The reply is snappy. “You can’t explain away everything.”Shane can’t think of a way to saywhat if you canwithout sounding like even more like a grade-A asshole than he usually does.





	anything less than nothing

**Author's Note:**

> A BFU fic! Here I am with another, even if this one is a little less tropey and romantic than previous things I've produced for this fandom. I love this dynamic and really enjoyed cleaning this up to share.
> 
> Full disclosure, this was initially going to be a multi-chapter epic, but I've shifted a lot of my priorities around and truly don't have it in me. I'm still really fond of this, though, and this location and setting were a lot of fun to create. I hope that you enjoy it, and that it works for you the way I'm hoping it will!
> 
> Thank you to Gray for looking this over ages ago, and to Brenn & Reid for discussing BFU fic on fic clique with me and making me nostalgic.
> 
> <3

“When they asked us to go on a road trip, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” says Shane, wiping the sweat from his brow with the bottom of his shirt. He’d had to unbutton the last two buttons just to get it to reach. He’s off by the side of the road and leaning against their useless, broken truck now while Ryan is standing a ways away trying to wave down passing cars, and he’s very tired and overheated.

Ryan sighs, laughing a little. “They should’ve known putting us in our own car would be a recipe for disaster.”

It was supposed to be the opposite of disaster, really. It’s one of the most experimental videos the company has ever approved, in no small part because of Ryan’s insistence and the success of Unsolved even despite the (universally beloved and critically acclaimed) Hot Daga and other turns the format has taken over the last couple of years. Not for nothing, but this show sells the most merchandise of any show on Blue, and most of it is just quotes and pictures of Ryan and Shane. Because of this, Ryan’s suggestion actually made sense, no matter how nervous it made some of the execs.

A road trip to an only sort of nearby location, just the two of them and a rudimentary camera setup, closer and more intimate than ever before. When it got approved, Ryan had lit up, babbling thanks and something about how much more evidence they’ll get when there’s less artifice in the production.

Shane is excited for the challenge. He’s used to complex shoots, to stitching together three or four different camera angles to make a shot. Now, stripped to its bones, the concept will have to hold up on its own. The content needs to be good enough without the sparkle of production value. Shane hasn’t been under this kind of pressure over such an extended period since he started as an intern, and he’s planning to thrive under it now like he did then.

Up ahead, a little sports car seems to be slowing down. “Need a jump?” yells a guy out the window. 

“Please,” answers Ryan, smiling ruefully. It’s warm and friendly, and Shane’s gaze catches on him for longer than it strictly needs to. Admittedly, there’s no good metric for too long out here in the desert, but he averts his eyes all the same, focusing on his phone even though he certainly can’t get any service this far from a major city.

Presumably, the guy gets out of the car and jumpstarts it, and soon after both cars are on their merry way. 

“He was nice,” says Ryan, flipping on the indicator to get back onto the highway even though there’s no one around to see it.

Shane hums. “I wasn’t really paying attention.” He’s too busy blasting the AC right in his own face. The further inland they get, the more oppressive the heat becomes. 

“Yeah, well, you’re the worst. Next stop, Vegas, baby!” Ryan’s head is almost entirely out the window like he’s a dog, re-energized by the success of getting back on the road, and his whoop is entirely joyous. They’re coming up on Baker soon, and Shane plans to insist on taking pictures with the giant thermometer. It’s going to be terrible. He can’t wait.

…

The location for this experiment is a dilapidated home on the outskirts of Las Vegas. It’s one story tall, the paint yellowed and peeling off of the front panels, and the top of the house is covered in the oldest solar panels Shane has ever seen. The window frames were possibly white once, but now they’re dirty. It looks like the kind of place that currently houses wild animals, which could be fun if only to see Ryan jump eight feet in the air when they make themselves known. “This place is even creepy during the day,” murmurs Ryan, voice low like he’s scared of spooking something. The sunset is slow coming, and it’s better lit than they’d expected it to be when they got here.

Their handheld cameras are rolling, so Shane makes a show of shrugging. “Looks like a house, Ryan. We’ve been in plenty of those, and nothing has ever dragged me into the pits of hell despite my asking very politely, so I think we’ll be alright.”

“Once I tell you what happened here you’ll understand why I already hate this place.”

“Maybe so,” answers Shane. “You wanna set up on the steps for the read, or should we head inside?” He puts his camera down, and Ryan does the same, mirroring him easily.

Ryan purses his lips, sizing the place up. “Outside, I think. I want your reaction for the first entry to be informed.”

Shane nods, hoisting the camera bag higher up on his shoulder. “Lay it on me, Mr. History.”

“Pretty sure that’s you.”

“We can share the title. I’m generous.”

Ryan wheezes. “God, you’re full of it.”

Shane laughs, too, and together they set up the tripod and figure out the angle they want for the read. The lighting gets a little tricky with the shaded porch and the slow sunset, but they’ve both worked on enough sets that it gets figured out quickly. “Need a minute?” asks Shane when they’re all set up, and he catches Ryan rehearsing his notes and mouthing along some of the first parts he’ll want to have memorized.

Ryan startles, looking up. “Oh,” he says, “yeah, if you don’t mind.”

“By all means.” Shane waves him off, and Ryan disappears around the side of the house. Shane can hear his voice start to drift back after a moment, and he pops in his earphones and focuses on catching a couple more sweeping shots of the landscape for the B-roll. The two of them mess around a lot, but Ryan really does want Shane’s genuine first reactions to the information, and Shane is perfectly fine with that remaining the case.

Minutes pass, and then a couple more minutes, and then it’s been nearly half an hour and Shane is still leaning against the porch. Any longer in this heat and he’ll have to literally peel this shirt off later, and that’s not a good look for anyone, especially considering the fact that they’re filming a show here.

He walks around to where Ryan is and finds him still practicing, so he knocks on the wood paneling to get his attention. “I’m a patient man, but I’m not a saint, Ryan.”

Ryan’s expression turns to chagrin when he sees Shane. “Fuck, sorry. I forget we don’t have crew members to keep us on track. I kept waiting for someone to come grab me.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I just want this to be perfect.”

“You’d work yourself into the ground if you could, I know. It’s never gonna be perfect. If it was, we’d lose our entire audience. We’re professional ghostie boys, our credibility is already in the toilet. You’re not gonna make it any worse for us, trust me.” Ryan is laughing by the time Shane is done speaking, which was the goal. Shane has worked next to Ryan for long enough to know that this is as close to a heart to heart as they can get, which is honestly fine with him. Ryan is the one that’s good at laying out his feelings without shame. Shane’s entire schtick relies on obfuscation.

“I’m putting ‘professional ghostie boy’ on my business card,” says Ryan as he folds his notes and walks with Shane to do the read.

Shane mostly tunes out the introduction they record, just offering his requisite head shake when Ryan asks the classic question: “Are ghosts real?”

He tunes right back in for the grisly details, though, because this one is particularly brutal. It could be a true crime episode if it were a) unsolved, and b) not mired in supernatural bullshit on every internet forum to have ever been dedicated to ghost stories. It is neither of those things, unfortunately, but it’s also fascinating. “Hudson and his wife Julia purchased this house in September of 1890,” Ryan is saying, “with the goal of fixing it up by Christmas of that year and then starting a family.”

“I don’t think they fixed it up very well,” cuts in Shane, looking dubiously at the paint job. “He was a contractor, you said?”

“Uh,” says Ryan, laughing and looking around as well, “yeah, apparently not a very good one. Anyway, they did actually redo some of the inside of the place, but in November, one of Hudson’s business associates basically just snapped.”

“Snapped?”

Ryan nods. “They were close friends, I guess, and the guy offered to help with some renovations. You know, the ol’ business lunch and then redo the living room.” 

He pauses, and Shane snorts. “Yeah, classic.”

“Anyway, they were in the middle of putting up an additional support beam together in the living room when the guy just dropped his side of it on Hudson’s head. And then he attacked Hudson, and soon after Mrs. Hudson, who rushed in when she heard the crash, with a hammer. Police Chief Daryl Young said it was one of the grisliest scenes he’d ever investigated. By the coroner’s best estimate, the fight took over two hours before both Hudsons were dead.”

“Jesus,” says Shane. His mood has dropped significantly listening to this. “I assume you think they’re ghosts now?”

“Multiple reports from families that have lived in this house since the incident have reported hearing footsteps, disembodied shouts, and a tapping sound that could be a hammer. There have also been reports of objects being thrown from shelves and doors slamming open and closed randomly. There are pages of first-hand accounts of things that have happened here because of the Hudsons’ quest for revenge from the spirit world.”

Ryan has a few other takes to run after that, plus the conclusion and the outtro that will lead to the shot of them in the house, so Shane stays put and listens to the rest of it. Some of the accounts of the crime scene are exceptionally detailed, and the fact that that part of is undeniably real makes it all the more terrible compared to the rest of it.

“Did this guy get caught?” he asks at one point, halfway through the third take of the read.

“Yeah,” says Ryan. “The police questioned him the next day and he confessed during the interrogation. He said he was in love with Julia, and that he was driven crazy by his jealousy.”

Shane shakes his head. “Nasty stuff.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty fucked up.”

“So you wanna head in and have a look around?” It’s not how they’d planned to lead into the house tour exactly, but Ryan laughs and agrees, and Shane figures the whiplash in tone is what a lot of their viewers stick around for anyway.

By this point, the sun is almost all the way down, warm dusk and a cool breeze accompanying them inside. There’s no electricity running through here anymore, so they don’t even bother testing the lights in the ceiling or the lamps, instead pulling out flashlights and making sure all of their equipment is running. It takes more time than usual to double check everything, since they have no other sources to fall back on if their own recordings fail. In the thirty minutes it takes them to get set, Shane is already sneezing at all of the dust in this place.

Ryan laughs at him. “That’ll be fun to listen to on the playback.”

“You’re welcome.” He takes a sip from his metal water bottle, and the sound echoes when he screws the cap back on.

“Whatever, asshole. Should we get started?” Ryan peers warily into the darkness, hands curling around the straps of his backpack. His eyes always seem to reflect so much light when they’re wide and darting around like that.

It won’t be a particularly long investigation. The episode will be lengthened by travel blogs and other behind the scenes extras, making up for the difference in footage during the site visit. They’d already done a whole spiel back at the office before they left, and a couple more clips on the way here. Still, they’ll be exploring the whole place, and this is one of the few locations in recent history where they couldn’t get permission to stay overnight—something about safety and air quality, Shane wasn’t really paying attention because he didn’t want to know what kind of things he was going to be subjecting himself to during the evening—so the investigation itself will be a little more extensive to make up for it.

Even then, he’s not particularly worried about it. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Right.” It sounds like Ryan says it mostly to himself, and he doesn’t spare Shane another glance and he starts to slowly lead the way further into the old house. 

They go to the kitchen first, which opens up into a little dining room empty of furnishings. “People have reported a lot of stuff in here,” offers Ryan quietly. In most of the locations they visit, there’s an unsettling amount of ambient noise: wind, rattling branches, water rushing through pipes. Out here in the desert, however, in a house that’s been empty for years, there’s nothing. Shane had been expecting a snake or something at least, but you could hear a pin drop in this place.

Shane lowers his voice too, not even fully sure of why he does it. “I really hope we don’t get jumped.”

“By a ghost?”

“What? No, by a person, Ryan. This would be the perfect hidey-hole for a murderer.”

“God, don’t say that. I’ve been doing so well at being braver on location.”

“Sure you have, buddy.”

Nothing much happens in the kitchen no matter how many times they sweep their flashlights across the room, so they move on. The little hallway that leads to the bedrooms is almost unnaturally dark, no windows to catch any stray moonlight. Shane turns his flashlight off, and waits for Ryan to do the same before starting forward. Ryan’s eyes must be playing all kinds of tricks on him, because he stiffens when he looks into that yawning expanse of inky black.

Ryan laughs a little, edged with nerves. “Boy, that’s, uh- I can see why people hate this place.”

Shane walks a little faster, prompting Ryan to do the same. “Listen,” he says, mostly just to be a dick. He can’t hear anything, but it does keep Ryan quiet the rest of the way down the hall.

“What?”

“Must’ve been the wind. Weird.”

Another beat of silence, and then Ryan huffs, shoving at Shane’s arm. “You are such a dick.”

There’s a smile in his voice, which is what Shane was aiming for anyway, so he just laughs it off.

At the end of the hallway, they turn right into another empty room, and a dull thud from what sounds like the window startles them both. “Shit,” says Ryan, “holy shit, is that what you heard? Who’s in here with us?”

“Show yourself, ghoul!” crows Shane. “Crush us to death with your hammer!”

“Shut up, his ghost wouldn’t even be here.” Ryan is fumbling through his bag for the spirit box, cursing under his breath and dumping more and more equipment on the floor until he finds it. His hands are shaking as he turns it on. Something about this place has him even more worked up than usual. Maybe it’s the lack of a crew, or the small, dark space, or the rush of a new season, that adrenaline turning so quickly into anxiety. Shane can’t pretend to understand it.

The box turns on. Usually, Ryan gives Shane a warning, if only to get his reaction on camera, but this time he doesn’t. They don’t even have a third camera up to get both perspectives. This is going to be a very tightly shot episode.

“I’m Ryan, and that’s Shane. Can you say our names back to us?” Ryan is saying.

Nothing. The static is loud, so few stations this far out of the city to break up the white noise.

“Jim Hudson, are you here? Julia?”

More static. Shane sighs, and it takes real effort not to pull out his phone and check how long this is taking. The reality is always disappointing. A minute with the spirit box feels like twenty, without exception.

“Did you make that noise?” asks Ryan. His voice has gone reedy, thin with being so tightly wound for so long. If Shane knows him, and he’s pretty sure he does, soon Ryan will transition to needling Shane to instigate the ghosts, trying and trying to get a reaction.

The spirit box continues to whir: static, static, static, and then-

A warped voice, not quite distinguishable. “That was gibberish,” says Shane, trying to head off the nonsense, but Ryan’s face has lit up.

“You’re scared?” asks Ryan, wide-eyed and so earnest. “Me too, ha. What happened here?”

More strange sounds, not the static of before but something else. There must be a stretch of stations near the same frequency. Shane still can’t understand what’s supposedly being said, but Ryan is easily convinced, and he’s nodding along. 

“Did you say you can’t move on? Can we help you?”

After that, it goes back to just static, and Ryan lets it run for longer than they usually do, probably bolstered by what he sees as amazing evidence.

Shane shifts from foot to foot. He’s trying not to be a dick, and the line between keeping his reactions vaguely kind and letting his skepticism shine through full blast is always hard to tread, especially when he’s tired and they’re standing in an empty room with that damn box on. “I think he’s done talking,” he says, and goes to suggest they start moving on when he’s interrupted.

A voice, this time undeniably clear, says, “You shouldn’t have come—,” and then the spirit box shuts off.

Ryan yelps, stumbling backwards, and points his flashlight at the box like he can use it as a weapon against a chatty spirit. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck, okay, do not be afraid, do not be afraid. God, I haven’t had to say that in a while. Jesus Christ, I- you heard that,” he says accusingly, pointing his light at Shane now. “You cannot fucking deny that.”

“I heard it,” says Shane. Privately, he wonders if someone is pulling a prank on them, and then thinks about how this will look in the episode. It was so clear. It might look like they’re the ones pulling a prank, padding their evidence like the shows they like to make fun of. Or hell, maybe it was a coincidence. It wasn’t that long of a statement, so reasonably it could’ve been a couple of unnaturally clear channels stitching themselves together. Or the spirit box could be faulty. It might be any of a number of things.

It’s so damn quiet in the room now that Ryan’s panicky breathing sounds twice as loud as it really is. “Shane, what the fuck.”

“I don’t know,” says Shane quickly. “It was probably-“

“The wind?” asks Ryan, nearly hysterical. His voice is strained, high. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“I don’t know,” says Shane again, this time slower. He puts his hands up, trying to make his own figure as non-threatening as possible. Ryan himself probably doesn’t even realize how riled up he is right now, but Shane doesn’t exactly want to keep pushing him. Sometimes it’s good TV, and sometimes it’s Shane sitting with him somewhere after the shoot either getting very drunk or, just once, sober in a hotel hallway, their backs against the wall and their legs out in front of them. Ryan had been hyperventilating when he knocked on Shane’s door that night, rambling about how his tv didn’t work and the quiet was fucking with his head. He’d asked for a distraction like he was embarrassed about it, and Shane didn’t make him ask again. They’d talked about their childhoods, growing up with siblings, what they love about their hometowns. It took almost two hours for Ryan’s hands to stop shaking, but Shane would’ve stayed there longer, no questions asked. He keeps that memory very close to his chest. He’s almost scared to make more like it because of how carefully that one crystallized. 

Ryan is frozen, still looking at Shane.

A few seconds removed from whatever the hell that was, Shane feels himself calming down. “I was going to say it’s probably someone trying to pull a fast one on us. The Boogaras have been getting pretty desperate lately.”

Ryan looks completely unconvinced, but it startles a laugh out of him. “You’re insufferable.”

“Most people think I’m charming.”

“Most people my ass.”

“Oh, baby, tell me more about your ass.”

Ryan splutters. “I fucking hate you.” Some of the tension in the air dissipates, the fraught feeling seeping away as they stand there, back to being two professional ghostie boys who have a comedy youtube series that masquerades as a serious ghost hunting show.

“Another room?” asks Shane, already starting to help gather the stuff Ryan had thrown around when making a mad grab for the spirit box. He really hopes that thing is broken for good, even if it does prove that ghosts are real, which is a testament to how much he hates that headache machine. He makes a note to use that joke later, and he and Ryan collect the equipment quickly.

Ryan sighs. “Yeah, just one more main one before we take a couple laps. It’s the master bedroom.”

“Exciting. Will the ghosts in there talk about how they used to bang?”

“Bang?”

“Bang, screw, do the dirty—you know what I mean. They were newlyweds, weren’t they?”

“I guess? That doesn’t mean they need to talk about banging there. Is that all you do in the bedroom?” Shane grins and cocks a brow, leering theatrically. “Don’t answer that,” says Ryan. “I have no idea why I agreed to do this with you.”

Shane has an idea, considering how much less Ryan’s hands are shaking now than they were just a few moments ago.

“Anyway,” continues Ryan, “it’s said that the ghosts of the Hudsons can be heard walking around in here, and even fighting with each other.”

“Huh. Not a perfect marriage, then.”

“I guess not.”

This room is just as cool and quiet as the rest of the house, apart from the occasional creak of a floorboard as they walk in. Shane can already guess how overactive imaginations could run wild in here.

“It’s loud,” says Shane, demonstrating by stepping exaggeratedly in different areas around the room.

Ryan nods, his hands tight around his camera. “The spirit box isn’t working, but we should still try to communicate with them. Our audio recorders might pick something up.”

Shane gestures the go ahead, and then they spend a few minutes that will need to be edited out later setting up their audio recorders, placing one on the floor in the middle of the room and a few more on each side. They get a third-person camera set up by the doorway, and Ryan spends longer than he probably needs to trying to get the angle right.

“We ready?” asks Shane.

Ryan nods. “Jim? Julia? Are you in here?”

Nothing.

Ryan tries again. “I’m sorry about what happened to you. You didn’t deserve that. Would you want to talk about it with us?”

Shane snorts. “Yeah, talk about your trauma to us, complete strangers, and we’ll broadcast it on the internet!”

For a moment, it looks like Ryan is going to chastise him, but he laughs instead. “Okay, fair point. Let’s talk about something else. Julia, I read that you liked to sew. What kinds of things did you sew?”

“Clothes, probably,” mutters Shane. Ryan ignores him.

He keeps chattering, and a lot of this is probably going to be edited out. Hopefully the audio recording catches a lucky combination of the wind and their clothes rustling, because otherwise the spirit box moment is going to be by far the most exciting part of this episode, and Shane is not particularly fond of the idea of doing a post-mortem entirely about shrieking static. Ryan inevitably makes him listen back to the raw audio of the recordings before those episodes so it’s fresh in their minds, and there are few things Shane would like to be _less_ fresh on his mind than that.

After a bit, Ryan squares his shoulders. “Last try,” he says. “No jokes.”

Shane pulls a face at that, more amused than anything, and says, “You have the floor.”

Ryan nods, nods again. “If anyone’s there,” he says, voice stronger now as he raises it, emboldened by his own frustration, “show yourself. We’re about to leave, and you’re going to be alone again unless you give us a sign.” 

As if summoned by the plea, a ray of moonlight sears through the window just a millisecond later, practically holy in its brilliance, and both of them startle at how suddenly it appears. Something is blocking part of it. For just a moment, it looks like an outline of wings.

“Holy shit,” breathes Ryan.

The moment, Shane knows, should be magical, especially considering the eerie spirit box activity from earlier. But no matter how hard he tries, he isn’t going to see anything other than a passing headlight reflecting off of something out of sight, painting the wall in patchy, white splotches. Ryan sees something else. By the look on his face, he feels something, too, connecting with the unknown on a level Shane wishes he could understand.

It flickers and disappears just a half second later, leaving them both in darkness again.

“Wow,” says Ryan.

Shane doesn’t know what to say. In the end, he sighs, feeling strangely helpless as he replies, “Sometimes a shadow’s just a shadow, Ryan.” 

The reply is snappy. “You can’t explain away everything.”

Shane can’t think of a way to say _what if you can_ without sounding like even more like a grade-A asshole than he usually does. “Let’s wrap up here,” he says instead, because the cameras are still rolling and he’s very, very tired.

“That was something,” insists Ryan, spinning around from the wall to face Shane. “You’re not going to convince me otherwise.”

Shane runs a hand through his hair, messing it up to hell because he doesn’t know what to do with the sheer defiance lighting up Ryan’s expression. “Agree to disagree,” he says, though it upsets the whole premise of the show to insist they head in that direction. He doesn’t recognize the quiet undercurrent in his own tone.

Ryan just looks at him for a moment. “Yeah,” he answers. His giddiness has faded to anger, and then again to a strange numbness that looks wrong on him. He sounds far away as he turns off his Go-Pro. “Okay, fine.”

They pack up the equipment in methodical movements, and Shane finds himself relying on muscle memory as his mind drifts. This location isn’t all that different from other places they’ve gone, and others have arguably been worse, but something about it still feels different, strained at the edges like a thread pulled taut between them. Doing this with Ryan is supposed to be the easy part. He’s not sure what he’ll do if their rapport turns into something mean and ugly.

It’s almost half an hour later that Shane speaks again. “Should we try to find a hotel, or just sleep in the car?”

Ryan is standing over their equipment with his hands on his hips like he’s surveying land. “Probably a hotel, right?”

They have a limited travel budget and hadn’t booked anything ahead, but Shane can’t deny that a shower sounds really nice after so long brushing against dusty surfaces that haven’t been cleaned in who knows how long. “Alright. I’ll start loading this up, then.”

“Let me help you,” says Ryan. He hoists up the other side of the camera bag, and together they pack up the remainders of their presence here into the car until the house looks just as dark and empty as it was when they got here.

Shane slips into the passenger seat, which is ratcheted back as far as it can go to accommodate his legs, and Ryan starts the car. In the distance, a storm is brewing, clouds gathering dark and ominous above the scene, and Shane wonders how long it will be before the sky breaks open and douses them both in water out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere. The silence presses harder against the truck, and Ryan flips on the radio to a random station. It’s playing the Tiger Teeth by Walk the Moon, the song crooning to them about having too much heart to stomach. Shane loves this song, but he doesn’t sing along.

…

Back in the hotel room, Shane realizes something he hadn’t considered much when he agreed to this: he and Ryan are going to get almost no alone time this trip unless they carve it out intentionally. He hasn’t felt the close quarters too intimately yet, but he’s sure eventually he’ll want to rip his own hair out. Ryan’s easy to be around, and they’ve never had this issue on trips before, but Shane knows himself. He’s an introvert, and he needs space. Just because Ryan feels like an exception sometimes doesn’t mean he actually is.

On the other twin bed, Ryan’s chest rises and falls in a slow, even pattern.

It’s nearly two in the morning. Ryan has been asleep for half an hour. Shane doesn’t remember when his presence became reassuring, but maybe there’s something about the magnitude of their solitude that has him clinging to any anchors he can.

Today was strange. He keeps running over it in his head, the same way he used to run his tongue over a place where he lost a tooth, trying to adjust to this unfamiliar landscape. The broken spirit box, the winged shadows—it’s uncomfortable, yes, but none of it really registers quite so sharply as his new heightened awareness of Ryan.

They’re good friends, and they’ve been good friends for a long time. Shane cares more about Ryan than he cares about most of his friends, but then again it’s been a stressful day. It’s a natural reaction. He shouldn’t be overthinking this the way he does everything else. It would be a lot easier if he could just … decide not to dwell on things. Live in the moment, or whatever bullshit.

He turns over again in the bed. The cheap sheets crinkle beneath his frame. 

To his left, his phone lights up on the nightstand, but he flips it over without looking at it, plunging the room back into darkness. In the quiet, he almost thinks he hears a change in Ryan’s breathing, like he’s woken up or he’s having a nightmare. Something like that, at least, like Shane has become so attuned to the other man that he could sense such a minute shift. It’s a nice thought, if an intimidating one.

Shane’s said it himself a million times, though—when you can’t see what’s in front of you, your brain makes something up to fill the space.

End


End file.
